Issue archives

#176 (Spring 2003)
Anne Carson

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Editorial

Kevin McNeilly

• Five Fairly Short Talks on Anne Carson (p. 6 - 10)
• Subjects: Poetry
• PDF available

Articles

Anne Carson and Kevin McNeilly

• Gifts and Questions: An Interview with Anne Carson (p. 12 - 25)
• Subjects: Authorship
• PDF available

Robert Stanton

• I am writing this to be as wrong as possible to you: Anne Carson’s Errancy (p. 28 - 43)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  This essay focuses on Anne Carson’s creative uses of “error.” Applying ideas from her critical studies – metaphor as “impertinence” from Eros the Bittersweet, the contrasting alienations of poets Simonides of Keos and Paul Celan in Economy of the Unlost – to Carson’s own poetry (particularly “Essay on What I Think about Most” from Men in the Off Hours), a picture is developed of her stance and ambition. Standing on the fringes of society, a poet addresses his or her poems to an idealized, imagined community of readers, never sure they will ever arrive. The metaphors of these poems are “true mistakes” that capture the hidden realities of the world more accurately – mimetically – than normal language usage ever could. As displayed in Carson’s artful use of the mock-interview in her poetic works – and in her frequent fluctuations between lyrical and critical “methods” – the poet thus moves uneasily from one meaning of the ancient Greek word xenos to another: “stranger” to “guest,” and back again.

• Subjects: Poetry
• PDF available

Ian Rae

• Anne Carson and the Solway Hoaxes (p. 45 - 65)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  This essay examines the reception of Anne Carson’s work by her most virulent critic, David Solway, and shows how factual errors in Solway’s polemics undermine his own poetic practice and critical discourse. Solway’s errors have prompted the speculation that his attack on Carson is a hoax on par with his earlier Karavis hoax, and this possibility is explored in detail before it is rejected. The conclusion counters Solway’s accusation that Carson is a literary "fraud" who has risen to prominence because of a "conspiracy" of promoters in the publishing industry by investigating Solway’s own connections within the publishing world and demonstrating that the attack on Carson functions as a platform for Solway’s self- and group-promotions.

• Subjects: Authorship, Media & Communications
• PDF available

Tanis Macdonald

• The Pilgrim and the Riddle: Father-Daughter Kinship in Anne Carson’s The Anthropology of Water (p. 67 - 81)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  Recent scholarly interest in the twentieth-century elegy has prompted investigation into negotiations of power and subjectivity in women’s familial elegies. If the limits of corporeal representation are a fundamental concern in any elegy, the ambivalence towards filial piety in contemporary women’s paternal elegies suggests a desire to delineate, and perhaps dismantle, the fidelity demanded by the father’s death. In “The Anthropology of Water,” Anne Carson uses the trope of the pilgrimage to test the tension between mourning and resistance. Through attempts to read the father’s body and speech, rendered opaque by Alzheimer’s disease, Carson’s narrator conducts an epistemological inquiry into the vicissitudes of filial devotion and inheritance. This article places the trope of the questing (and questioning) pilgrim against the model of Antigonal mourning, and considers the text’s difficult male-female relationships (filial, sexual, and fraternal) as these relationships are presaged, and often precluded, by the father-daughter relationship.

• Subjects: Home & Family, Poetry
• PDF available

Andre Furlani

• Reading Paul Celan with Anne Carson: What Kind of Withness Would That Be? (p. 84 - 104)
• Subjects: Comparative, Poetry
• PDF available

Poems

Anne Carson

• Guillermo's Sigh Symphony (p. 11)

Kathy Mac

• Faith. Fides. Trust without proof. (p. 26 - 27)

Susan L. Helwig

• A lesbian and her lover in Siberia (p. 44)

Crystal Hurdle

• Second-hand Depression (p. 66)

Ken Norris

• Too Much Joy (p. 82)

Ken Norris

• The Day (p. 83)

Gil Garratt

• No. 2. (from the Naked Book of Need) (p. 105)

Sarah Klassen

• Poems for Advent, 1997 (p. 106 - 107)

Book Reviews

Reviews section PDF available

]Thought ]Barefoot (p. 108 - 110)

by Chris Jennings

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Economy of the Unlost (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan) by Anne Carson
2. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson

Subjects: Economics, Language/Linguistics, Poetry

The Battle of Tango (p. 110 - 111)

by Julie Archer

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Beauty of the Husband: a fictional essay in 29 tangos by Anne Carson

Subjects: Poetry

Literary Artists' Statements (p. 111 - 114)

by W. F. Garrett-Petts

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Magpie Life: Growing a Writer by George Bowering
2. Living Here by David Helwig
3. Lyric/Anti-Lyric: Essays on Contemporary Poetry by Douglas Barbour

Subjects: Authorship, Autobiography, Life Writing, Literary Criticism, Poetry

Mon pays, c'est l'hiver (p. 114 - 115)

by Paul Denham

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Selected Stories, Volume One: Southern Stories by Clark Blaise

Subjects: Short Fiction

The Language Around You (p. 116 - 117)

by Adam Dickinson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Matrix Interviews: Moosehead Anthology #9 by Angela Carr and R. E. N. Allen
2. Vis à Vis: Fieldnotes on Poetry & Wilderness by Don McKay
3. Where the Words Come From: Canadian Poets in Conversation by Tim Bowling

Subjects: Authorship, Essays, Poetry

Two Gold Bricks (p. 117 - 119)

by Christine Wiesenthal

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Anthem by Helen Humphreys
2. The End of Travel by Julie Bruck

Subjects: Poetry

Unmarked Intersections (p. 119 - 121)

by Méira Cook

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Latent Heat by Catherine Hunter
2. traffick by Rob Budde

Subjects: Poetry, Prairie Writing

Vanished Frames (p. 121 - 122)

by Tamas Dobozy

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Airborne Photo by Clint Burnham
2. Blonds on Bikes by George Bowering

Subjects: Poetry

Imagining Justice (p. 122 - 124)

by Kristina Fagan

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State by Alan C. Cairns
2. Justice in Paradise by Bruce Clark

Subjects: First Nations, Law & Prison, Multiculturalism, Nationalism

Post-Race: Contemporary Black Writing (p. 125 - 126)

by Karina Vernon

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Being Black: Essays by Althea Prince
2. Dreaming Black Writing White: The Hagar Myth in American Cultural History by Janet Gabler-Hover
3. Race and Racism: Canada's Challenge by Leo Driedger and Shiva S. Halli
4. Writing from the Borderlands: A Study of Chicano, Afro-Caribbean and Native Literatures in North America by Carmen Cáliz-Montoro

Subjects: Afro-Canadian, Nationalism, Native Studies, United States

Zoom In, Zoom Out (p. 127 - 128)

by Sonnet L'Abbé

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Woman Alone on the Atikokan Highway by Jeanette Lynes
2. all you expect of the road by Sue Nevill
3. Clouds Without Heaven by Mary Cameron
4. Facts by Bruce Taylor

Subjects: Poetry

Lyrical Scrutiny (p. 129 - 131)

by Adam Dickinson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Crows Do Not Have Retirement by David Zieroth
2. Mind Over Mountains: Selected and Collected Poems by Jon Whyte
3. Modigliani by Martin Gray
4. Stream Under Flight by John Livingstone Clark

Subjects: Home & Family, Poetry

Exercising Maleness (p. 131 - 134)

by Brent MacLaine

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Autodidactic by Don Kerr
2. Change Room by Mark Cochrane
3. His Life by George Bowering

Subjects: Body & Health, Landscape/Space, Poetry

Five Anthologies (p. 134 - 137)

by Christopher Levenson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Doors of the Morning by Fred Cogswell
2. New Life in Dark Seas by Stan Dragland
3. Vintage 1999 by League of Canadian Poets
4. Vintage 2000 by League of Canadian Poets
5. Writing Class by Michael Barnholden and Andrew Klobucar

Subjects: Anthologies, Poetry

Good, But Not So Pretty (p. 137 - 139)

by Sonnet L'Abbé

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Opening the Island by Anne Compton
2. Short Haul Engine by Karen Solie
3. The Good Life by Brad Cran

Subjects: Poetry

Three Faces of Faith (p. 139 - 141)

by Kent Lewis

Book(s) reviewed:

1. In the Beginning by W. J. Keith
2. Summertown by Anne Corkett
3. The Dark Side of the Moon by Gail Fox

Subjects: Poetry

Short Pieces (p. 141 - 142)

by Stephen Guy-Bray

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Bafflegab by Stan Rogal
2. Close to Spider Man by Ivan E. Coyote
3. Faggot!: Steel Kiss and Gulag by Robin Fulford
4. Looking for Brothers by Michael Rowe

Subjects: Drama, Gay/Lesbian, Short Fiction

Poète de l'entre-deux-mondes (p. 143)

by Denise Rochat

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Rouleaux de printemps by Patrice Desbiens

Subjects: Francophone, Ontario, Poetry

Aesthetic Distances (p. 144 - 145)

by R. W. Stedingh

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Second Earth: Poems Selected and New by Harold Enrico
2. Collected Poems by Eldon Grier
3. Tom Thomson and Other Poems by George Whipple

Subjects: Poetry

Findley's Ground (p. 146 - 147)

by Lorraine M. York

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Spadework by Timothy Findley

Subjects: Drama, Novel

Three First Novels (p. 147 - 149)

by Sara Jamieson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Excessive Joy Injures the Heart by Elisabeth Harvor
2. Then Again by Elyse Friedman

Subjects: Home & Family, Novel

Three First Novels (p. 147 - 149)

by Sara Jamieson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Burning Ground by Pearl Luke

Crossroads (p. 150 - 152)

by Klay Dyer

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Burridge Unbound by Alan Cumyn
2. The Dominion of Wyley McFadden by Scott Gardiner
3. The Grave by James Heneghan

Subjects: Children's Literature, Novel

"Canpo," Thirty Years On (p. 152 - 154)

by Amanda Goldrick-Jones

Book(s) reviewed:

1. 15 Canadian Poets x 3 by Gary Geddes

Subjects: Anthologies, Poetry

Lie to Me (p. 154 - 156)

by Robert Stacey

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Half Known Lives by Joan Givner
2. Liar by Joanna Gosse
3. Make Believe Love by Lee Gowan
4. Ondine's Curse by Steven Manners

Subjects: Novel

Perfect Cree (p. 156 - 157)

by Margery Fee

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway

Subjects: First Nations, Novel

A Celestial Hierarchy (p. 157 - 158)

by Barbara Pell

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Near Water by Hugh Hood

Subjects: Novel, Religion

Literature and Medicine (p. 158 - 159)

by Alan Bewell

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Teaching Literature and Medicine by Anne Hunsaker Hawkins and Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Subjects: Body & Health, Literary Criticism

The Use of Beauty (p. 159 - 160)

by Wilhelm Emilsson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Different Silence: Selected Poems by árni Ibsen

Subjects: Icelandic-Canadian, Poetry

Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll (p. 160 - 162)

by Douglas Ivison

Book(s) reviewed:

1. 19 Knives by Mark Anthony Jarman
2. The Fall of Gravity by Leon Rooke
3. The Pornographer's Poem by Michael Turner

Subjects: Novel, Short Fiction, United States

Restless Women (p. 162 - 164)

by Hilary Clark

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Ring Finger, Left Hand by Katherine Lawrence
2. Some Bones and a Story by Alice Major
3. Talking Down the Northern Lights by Shelley A. Leedahl

Subjects: Poetry, Women's Literature

Atwood in Europe (p. 164 - 166)

by Janice Fiamengo

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Margaret Atwood: Works and Impact by Reingard M. Nischik
2. To Join, to Fit, and to Make: The Creative Craft of Margaret Atwood's Fiction by Christina Ljungberg

Subjects: Literary Criticism

Opening Words (p. 166 - 167)

by Neil Querengesser

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Other Harmony: The Collected Poetry of Eli Mandel by Eli Mandel, Andrew Stubbs, and Judy Chapman

Subjects: Poetry

Take and Read (p. 167 - 169)

by Neil Querengesser

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Flat Side by Monty Reid
2. Parable Beach by Paddy McCallum
3. The Hornbooks of Rita K by Robert Kroetsch
4. The Science of Nothing by Marty Gervais

Subjects: Poetry

Of Selves and Others (p. 169 - 171)

by Carole Turner

Book(s) reviewed:

1. ashes are bone and dust by Jill Battson
2. Hypothesis by John Barton
3. Somewhere Running by Nathalie Stephens
4. Wild Mouse by Derek McCormack and Chris Chambers

Subjects: Photography, Poetry

A Generic Africa (p. 171 - 172)

by Neil ten Kortenaar

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The God Who Begat a Jackal by Nega Mezlekia

Subjects: Afro-Canadian, Novel, Twenty-First Century

'Beyond can be our model" (p. 172 - 174)

by Charles Barbour

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person: A Transelation by Eirin Mouré
2. The Weather by Lisa Robertson

Subjects: Poetry

Ode to the Common Man (p. 174 - 176)

by Richard Harrison

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Hotel Montreal: New and Selected Poems by Ken Norris
2. Limbo Road by Ken Norris
3. Odes by Ken Norris

Subjects: Poetry

Elizabeth Bishop At Home (p. 176 - 178)

by Sara Jamieson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Divisions of the Heart: Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Memory and Place by Peter Sanger, Sandra Barry, and Gwendolyn Davies
2. Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares by Carmen L. Oliveira and Neil K Besner

Subjects: Authorship, Biography, Literary Criticism, Poetry

The Printed Page (p. 178 - 179)

by Susan Fisher

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Alphabetical by P. K. Page

Subjects: Poetry

Ecce Homo (p. 179 - 180)

by Kerry McSweeney

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Testament by Nino Ricci

Subjects: Novel, Religion

Poetics for Politics? (p. 180 - 182)

by Tracy Wyman-Marchand

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Duncan Campbell Scott: Addresses, Essays, and Reviews by Leslie Ritchie

Subjects: Essays, Poetry

Para-Literary Performers (p. 182 - 184)

by Ian Rae

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Performing the Literary Interviews by John Rodden
2. Pragmatic Plagiarism: Authorship, Profit, and Power by Marilyn Randall

Subjects: Authorship, Cultural Studies

Bedfellows (p. 184 - 185)

by Stephen Guy-Bray

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Angelic Echoes: Hervé Guibert and Company by Ralph Sarkonak
2. Bisexuality & the Eroticism of Everyday Life by Majorie Garber

Subjects: Gay/Lesbian, Sexuality

Transcultural Feminisms (p. 185 - 188)

by Sneja Gunew

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminisms in a Transnational Age by Ella Shohat

Subjects: Feminism, Multiculturalism

Interpreting Poetry (p. 188 - 189)

by Christine Stewart

Book(s) reviewed:

1. ABC of reading TRG by Peter Jaeger
2. Poetic Epistemologies: Gender and Knowing in Women's Language-Oriented Writing by Megan Simpson

Subjects: Gender, Language/Linguistics, Poetry, Women's Literature

Ivory Thoughts (p. 189 - 190)

by Neil Querengesser

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Last Canadian Poet: An Essay on Al Purdy by Sam Solecki

Subjects: Literary Criticism, Poetry

The Genial Disconnects (p. 191 - 192)

by Ted Byrne

Book(s) reviewed:

1. News & Smoke: Selected Poems by Sharon Thesen

Subjects: Poetry

Into & Beyond Bodies (p. 192 - 194)

by Sally Chivers

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Into the Fold by Jacqueline Turner
2. Into the Peculiar Dark by Anne F. Walker
3. Scissor, Paper, Woman by Marianne Bluger

Subjects: Poetry

Frances in Mysticland (p. 194)

by Wilhelm Emilsson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Frances by W. D. Valgardson

Subjects: Icelandic-Canadian, Novel, Young Adult

Open Meditations (p. 195 - 196)

by Karl Jirgens

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Burn by Paul Vermeersch
2. Chess Pieces by David Solway
3. Light-crossing by Michael Redhill
4. The Tapeworm Foundry by Darren Werschler-Henry

Subjects: Poetry

Opinions & Notes

Jes Battis

• "Dangling inside the word she": Confusion and Gender Vertigo in Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red (p. 198 - 203)
• Subjects: Body & Health, Gender, Novel, Sexuality